Rome, home: the disquieting vision of Caimi and Piccinni

What else should be said about Rome? Nothing that can’t already be read in the politics or news daily pages, nothing that can’t already be found in the undaunted tourist feed which takes everything but doesn’t give back anything: the demeaning account of a city on the edge between an alleged Caput Mundi and a wishful Great Beauty. But in so far as it’s true that it is made up of Romans, who historically both let go and thrives on their city’s hubris and decay (be it republican, imperial or dictatorial), it’s just as evident that Rome is too big a house not to be also a goal, a shed, a hideout or a dwelling for everyone who is not from there. Be it by choice, chance, fate or need, it’s in Rome that many roads lead to, and it’s in Rome that many destinies entwine.  And it’s still Rome that Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni has chosen as a base for all of their wanderings, a place they’re not from but where each time they get back to.  Here, between a report from Ukraine and the survey on a migration, in a journey that always swings between a narrative of international events and one of their own intimacy, the two photographers discovered how to go beyond the barren dichotomy that divides personal from universal.

Rome thus become a medium to evoke a deep force, both hidden in reality and clear in the photographs that represent and, like the outcome of a ritual, in the end replace it. It’s in this almost magical and still very concrete overlapping that lies the fascination of “Rhome”, an expressionist, bewitched, visceral, uncompromising and occasionally disturbing vision of the city that Caimi and Piccinni call home. Recipient of the FUAM Dummy Book Award, the project is now a book and, thanks to the curator Lorenzo Castore, a renowed photographer who share with Caimi and Piccinni a sort of formal and conceptual brotherhood, an exhibition at last, from March 20 to April 12 at Officine Fotografiche (in Rome, obviously).